A Mother's Heart is a Gethsemane

 Not one of the apostles could stay awake to keep watch with Christ as He suffered His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, but I cannot help but believe there was one who kept watch with Him even though she was not in the Garden with Him.  Perhaps some of the mystics wrote about His Mother keeping watch in prayer with Him that night wherever she happened to be.  How could such a Mother, united so closely to her Son, not know in her heart and soul of His agony?

A mother suffers when her children suffer.  Perhaps in a way she even suffers more than they suffer, for she can see more clearly than they where their paths lead and the pain they will bring upon themselves.  She wants to spare them all the suffering that she can—even to wishing she could take on their pain for them.

"Father, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not My will but Thine be done."

So Christ prayed in Gethsemane.  How powerless He must have felt as He knelt and prayed, faced with the anguish of knowing the suffering He would undergo.  Likewise how powerless a mother feels as she prays to the Father that He might take away her cup, which is to spare her children their suffering.

It is easy to focus on Christ's agony as His fear and terror of the cruel torture He would experience in being scourged, crowned with thorns, mocked, condemned to death, and crucified.  Yet what is such physical suffering in comparison to the pain of His heart?

He chose to suffer out of love.  Consider for a moment what that means: He suffered such a cruel death not merely to fulfill the demands of justice and allow us to enter heaven, but because He loves us and desires us to be in intimate relationship with Him.  One who loves infinitely must suffer infinitely.

He loves you and wants you close to His heart.  You.  Not the you that you would like to be, but you as you are.  You have a special place in His heart that He gives to none other.

So many turn away from such love.  Who can bear it?

Think of the pain you have ever felt when someone rejected your love.  His pain in Gethsemane—the cup He asked His Father to take away—must have been bitter with unrequited love. He longed so much for all to love Him and yet knew how many would reject Him. He must have felt as He knelt there that His sacrifice was in vain—that it was not enough for Him to suffer such pain out of love, for it would not be enough to win the hearts of all to love Him.  The devil must have tempted Him with the folly of His sacrifice, urging Him to give it up as fruitless because He would give all that He had and it would not be enough.

A mother's heart serves as a similar battleground.  A mother gives everything she has and it is not enough.  How much she must be tempted to think that it is all in vain and to feel the agony of her own powerlessness in the face of what she desires with all her heart and soul.  Truly she is united in that pain with Christ in Gethsemane.

Wait Here and Watch

Think of Saint Joseph at work with Jesus beside him no more than a boy.  It is easy to imagine him saying to Jesus, "Wait here and watch," as he showed Him how to work some tool or carve a bit of wood.

Today's great solemnity honoring Saint Joseph rises amidst the bustle of daily life and the desert of the Lenten fast like a great shining jewel, reminding us also to take a moment to watch and wait.  Perhaps in that moment's silence we may learn some great secret of the inner life.  Perhaps Saint Joseph will teach us how better to serve our Lord.

As we continue on through Lent, we can think of another time when those same words were used: Wait and watch.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ spoke in those words to His disciples.  "Wait here and watch with me," He said to them, and not "Pray with me."  He only asked them to watch and wait, the simplest of actions, even if sometimes the most difficult.

Why?

Did He know it would be too much for them to attempt to pray?  Did He know that they scarcely understood yet how to pray?  Or did He merely want them to watch how He prayed in the face of temptation and His coming death that they might learn how to act in the face of trials too?

A disciple is one who sits at the Master's feet and learns from Him, as Saint Joseph must have done in his silent way.  We too can sit and watch there, listening to His voice, soft and full of love for us.  Watch and wait.

IX. Jesus Falls the Third Time

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.
R. Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

"Third time's the charm," as people say.  There is something significant in the number three: a powerful expression of finality.

When Christ fell the third time, how weak He must have been, how near unto the place of crucifixion and yet how far.  In His weakness He must have lain for a moment, trying to draw strength to rise, His will bent still toward our salvation, loving us with every moment of the immense torment He suffered as He lay against the rock-strewn ground.

Think of what the devil whispered into His ears.  For He was not left alone in that moment of weakness, but laid bare to all the snares of enemy.

What about your own falls?  It is when we are weakest that the devil likes to strike, for he cannot get us when we are wrapped about with the power and love of Christ.  It is only when we lie prone in our weakness and do not wish to go on that he can tempt us not to go on.  Then he can make us feel that all is hopeless, that we are powerless, and that we shall never rise from this darkness.

How much more must Christ have been tempted as He lay there.  Was it because He was God that He did not give in?

Rather it was love.  For only love can carry one through temptation.  Only love can make us so little heed our own darkness that we will to suffer it so long as God wills it.  Only love can raise us up when we have fallen.  Only love can give us hope in a brighter dawn.

And our Lord did not remain on the ground.  He struggled to His feet again, the cross still upon His shoulders.

Perhaps His entire human nature cried out that it was futile and that He would never have the strength to reach the place of crucifixion.  The enemy may have whispered of our infidelity, our lack of care for Him, our turning away and complete disdain for all that He was doing for us.  Yet He loved us still.  He went on because He wanted to show us that love in the most powerful way He could: by dying for us.  That death He had already begun, dying for us in each moment, and dying to the temptations that assailed even Him.

May He grant us the grace to rise from our hardest falls and to go on for love of Him.

Ah, my outraged Jesus, by the merits of the weakness Thou didst suffer in going to Calvary, give me strength sufficient to conquer all human respect, and all my wicked passions, which have led me to despise Thy friendship. I love Thee, Jesus my love, with my whole heart; I repent of having offended Thee. Never permit me to offend Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)

The Misfortune of Being Good

"Yes.  I had the misfortune to be born good.  And it is a misfortune, I can tell you, General.  I really am truthful and unselfish and all the rest of it; and it's nothing but cowardice; want of character; want of being really, strongly, positively oneself."

-the Strange Lady, "Man of Destiny" by George Bernard Shaw

When I first read this quotation it struck me by its paradoxical nature.  (Of course it also struck me rather personally, but that's another can of worms.)

As I continue to reflect upon these words, I marvel at how beautifully Shaw broke apart the culture of niceness in these few phrases.  For in our modern society we tend to think of qualities such as niceness and tolerance as being admirable.  Often we look at those quiet and pious by temperament as being advanced in holiness.

Yet I daresay Saint Paul would object strongly to such folly.  After all, he had to struggle mightily to live a virtuous life and even be knocked off his horse (literally enough) because he was going the wrong direction.  He was not afraid to stand up to Saint Peter and tell him he was wrong, nor did he have any trouble calling out those not following the right path.  And if you read his writings, there's the boasting....  In short, he was quite positively and unashamedly himself.  So I don't think he fits that mode of niceness in the least.

Now you might wonder how there could possibly be misfortune in being by nature good, or being a nice person, especially if you happen to be someone who struggles with temptations on a grander scale.  I will tell you.

First let me offer you an analogy: imagine that you are a long-distance runner and that running comes easily to you so that you win each race and never have to do much training while those around you must spend hours every day trying to get their bodies into shape and still never quite measure up.  Now imagine you injure yourself so that you are no longer able to run with such ease.  That handicap weighs down on your spirits and you lose race after race.  Soon you fall into depression because you cannot face the seemingly-insurmountable difficulties.  You give up on running and try to pursue another course, but to no avail.  Everywhere you meet failure.  On the other hand, one of your fellow runners who had to struggle so hard and had to deal with natural handicaps to his speed now outstrips everyone else because he has put so much into his training.  If you put as much into as he did you might take the lead again, but why would you when it came easily before?

Now obviously the competitive nature of this analogy does not carry across into the evaluation of the nice person.  However, the main thrust remains the same: if you do not have to strive hard after virtue and you suddenly come face to face with a difficult situation or great temptation, what will keep you from giving in?

Thus being by nature inclined toward what is good can prevent one from developing true goodness, the goodness that comes of virtue hard won by the grace of God.  Natural goodness may be no more than weakness, a fear of offending others, a fear of being seen as less than perfect.  This pseudo-virtue that stems from pride is the mask of a coward not a saint.  Niceness may yet bear fruit, but only through the same fire of purification that burns away the dross from the silver of those who seek God in all the messiness of their disagreeableness.

May you run, as Saint Paul says, to win a crown that will not fade!

Come Holy Spirit!

Joining friends in prayer for the Pentecost vigil stirred up for me so many thoughts and feelings about this pilgrimage that is the spiritual life.  It is amazing to me how powerful and yet how intangible is that interior battle.

"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh weak." - Matthew 26:41

Sometimes it seems incredibly tempting to turn away from the battle and follow the easier path of doing my own will since I seem to keep trying to do that anyway even when I disguise it as trying to surrender to God's will.  I hear that those who choose to follow that path do not have to face temptations.  After all, if they are already doing what the enemy wants, why would he bother with them?

I used to think that once one followed the path of holiness, it would become easier to choose the right.  Yet the opposite seems true: those who choose to face that battle find it grow harder day by day.

As my grandma has reminded me, the closer we go to the light, the deeper are the shadows.

Although the battle grows harder day by day and the shadows deeper, there is no surrender, however dearly-bought, that does not allow the Lord to work.  Opening one's heart in surrender and trying to empty out the desire for anything but Him alone may allow the enemy to attack with all manner of doubts and the heart to rise up in rebellion, but grace remains.

"For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want." - Galatians 5:17

Saint Paul was a man of great wisdom, as is my friend who gave me this scripture verse in answer to my questioning about this interior battle and the heart's rebellion.  I tend to think that any sin—or even resistance to God—spoils the good that I wish to do.  Yet I must realize that is the attitude of pride: it comes from the self who wishes to be perfect and to do great things for its own glory.

The sword of truth cuts deep.  It must, for it must pierce between our illusions and the reality of God.

So long as we form our own ideas of God and what it means to please Him and belong to Him, we rush toward a fearsome precipice.  This is to build our own idols in the place of God.  We may find ourselves creating schemes of grandeur for our service in His sight also that we may find our worth, but our true value lies in belonging to Him alone.

We are already His.  We need to prove nothing to become the children of God.  For He has already purchased us with the price of His blood.  All we need to do is learn to accept that reality and open our hearts to being His in all our apparent weakness and uselessness.

Otherwise, we risk losing our very selves.  In the words of Father Thomas Merton (shared providentially today by another good friend):

"Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.

"This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.

"My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love - outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

"We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves - the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people of the world, there is no great subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.

"All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge, and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.

"But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake."

In that void—when we are emptied of all our illusions—we come to the feet of our Lord and Master.  There we begin to receive true love: the love that counters all the deceits of the enemy and reveals how irreplaceable we are in the eyes of Christ, who longs for our friendship more than we can ever imagine.  When we allow that love to fill us, then our emptiness becomes transformed into something beautiful.

May the Holy Spirit bring us to that emptiness, and to the shores of mercy, by our own consent!

Veni Sancte Spiritus!

Filling the Void

It is amazing how many thousands of things we can use to fill the void.  What good is it to give up one if you replace it with any number of these?  It seems it would be better to give up everything.

I suppose this is why our Lord withdrew into the desert, fasting for forty days.  There was nothing there to fill the void and yet how could He have felt the void, for surely that is the result of man disunited from God?  Yet He suffered as we, so He must in some way have experienced it.  Elsewise the temptations of the devil would not have been in the least tempting to Him.  Clearly He would never have given in to them, but He must have found them alluring at least in His humanity.

The allurement of earthly pleasures is what draws us to them and keeps drawing us to them, even when ultimately we find them unsatisfying.  No matter how many times we indulge, we always want more.

Taking forty days to let go of one of those ways of indulging might mean only that we replace it with another.  Yet if we are able to replace that pleasure instead with prayer or good works, we may find a new habit that deepens into joy through the struggle.  That sacrificial practice forges our souls, forming us into a new creation, and allowing God to work within us.

Then too we take one small step nearer to the God who is already so near to us.

When the Going Gets Tough

...the tough get going.

So goes the expression.  Perhaps it is a particularly fitting one as we enter this second week of Lent.

Discipline has always come easily to me—not always to the extent that I wish of course, but certainly far exceeding that of most people.  Thus it has always been easy for me to enter into the sacrifice of Lent, which seems of necessity to require the giving up of something; somehow I take that sacrificial aspect for granted as part of the season rather than it being a main focus.

Because of my self-discipline I often find it difficult to relate to those who fail at what they are giving up.  Intellectually of course I can relate, but not so much experientially.  If I say I will do something, I jolly well will do it.

Consequently, I have found myself able to enter into Lent with a spirit of joy.  Certainly there is an element of sorrow in meditating upon our Lord's passion, but how much more joy there is in recognizing His great love for us and in giving up some little things to become united with Him.  It is joyful not on account of the sacrifice, though, but rather on account of the freedom.  For I always find that when I am able to give up some little things I become more free and less weighted down by the chains of things I must have to be happy.  Because I can see so clearly the freedom it brings, the enemy does not even try to tempt me.

Already this Lent, however, I have come to a point of greater temptation.  The enemy likes to catch us when we are weak, waiting until sickness and our own efforts have brought us to a place of confusion and darkness.  Then he strikes.  For he knows that in the clear light and joy shining from the heavens he will have no chance.  It is only in failing strength that he has hope of victory.

Yet our victory is in the name of the Lord.  By His strength, we shall remain firm in our resolutions to live wholly for Him this Lent.  Pray for me in that, as I pray for you.